Tim froze as the image of the gun barrel between his eyes registered. Shit. A hand came down and wrapped firmly around his wrist and the bottom of his hand. "Now before you start wondering if you're faster than me, I suggest you just hand me that gun in your hand because I promise you, you aren't."

He had no choice but to relinquish his weapon. Another set of hands from behind him on the other side of the door relieved him of the one at the small of his back. Joke was on them, he had another in an ankle holster. Joke was on him because he couldn't reach for it. There was a sickening lance of fear as his pistol left his hand. At least in Afghanistan he had a weapon. With that and bullets, he could shoot back. Now he didn't even have that. Quick on the heels of the initial burst of fear was acceptance. You make the most of what you have, and that's really all you can do. You don't do that, and you will die; you do that and there's a chance. He forced his breathing to remain normal and look at the man holding the gun to his head. Middle build, ACU boots, and a high and tight. God shit-fucking Christ. It was damn disconcerting to have a military man, a man who in other circumstances should have his back come hell (and hell so often came) or high sand, holding a gun in his face. It pissed him off. There was an uncomfortable moment when the memory of a heroin addict committing suicide by cop surfaced. He pushed it down and came back to the moment. Raylan was calling down the hallway.

"Now before you do something really stupid, I have to inform you that that man is a Deputy U.S. Marshal. It's not going to go well for you if something happens to him."

The guy didn't seem bothered by Raylan's warning. "Oh, don't worry, we know exactly who he, and you, are. The good part here is that he doesn't need to get hurt. Neither do you. I'm just going to ask you to hand over our girl there."

"Ours. And not gonna happen." Tim's assertion was met with a sneering snicker. What he would do to turn that guy's nose to gravel.

"Oh, come on now, Deputy." Her voice was steady, but a shade too high. God. Dammit. Raylan, shut that woman up. He turned his head slowly, so as not to startle the man with the gun, to peer down the hall at Raylan and Eve. He could see her feet. Raylan was using an arm to keep her corralled behind him, and her hands clutched at either side of his jacket. "How exactly to you propose we do that Mr…?"

"Smith," he replied, "It's nice to see the lady is so open-minded."

"Well I ain't so obliging as she is," Tim snarled. There was no world in which this ended with them letting anyone take her. He yelled down the hallway, "Raylan, tell our witness not to be a dipshit!" He refocused on his captor. You can try jackass.

"He doesn't have much say in the matter, Deputy." His head snapped back at her words, and a brick dropped into his gut and fell straight to the bottom. Her voice had a determined resolution, and Eve had pulled Raylan's back-up piece from his waistband and was pointing it into his side. "I'm sorry, Raylan, but I need you to put yours on the ground." The look on Raylan's face would have been priceless if the shitshow unfolding in front of his eyes hadn't been happening. He acquiesced, and she nudged the gun back towards her once it was on the floor, then bent to pick it up and put it in her coat pocket.

"Eve, you stupid bitch, you turn around and go back in the building!" Oh he was furious, furious at her, furious at himself, furious at Raylan. She wouldn't have shot him, and he should have knocked her down and taken his gun back. This was not going to end well. She was going to get herself killed, and he was quickly running out of ideas of how to stop it.

"Shut up, Deputy. I'm having a conversation with the nice man who's got a gun to your head." She circled carefully out from behind Raylan, the gun trained on his chest. After coming half way down the hall between the door and Raylan, she leaned against the wall and let the gun rest at her side. The hand holding the gun was too white. She flexed her hand around the grip a few times, but the white-knuckled grip stayed. She was frightened.

"Eve!" Stupid fucking God-damned shit for brains-

She ignored him and addressed Mr. Smith. "I have a proposal for you, Mr. Smith. You need me alive. Otherwise I can't recant my testimony, and I can't show the DA how cleverly I fabricated all that evidence against your boss. We can agree on that, right?"

"Sounds like you're headed in the right direction, Miss Carlan." The right direction would be running away from your ass.

"Well then," she took a steadying breath, "how about this, to make everyone happy." She noticed Raylan had taken a step forward while her attention was on Mr. Smith. "Raylan, so help me, I will shoot you in the foot if you take another step." As if reading his thoughts, she cocked the hammer, "And if you don't believe that, then believe that I'm jumpy enough that any sudden movement from you might cause my finger to spasm on this trigger." She raised the gun slightly in his direction to make the point before turning back to the door. Raylan stayed still. "As I was saying, Mr. Smith… You and the Deputy are going to stand in that doorway. You'll keep your gun aimed at him, and I'm going to come down the hall with this gun, and it's going to be aimed at you. If it makes you feel better, your friend on the other side of the door can come out and aim his gun at me as well. Plenty of incentive for everyone to behave. When both deputies are around the corner and back in the courthouse where you can't shoot them, I'll lower my gun, and we can go wherever you like." She waved the gun behind her. Raylan stayed at the corner, not behind it.

"I think that's a solid plan. Mr. Jones and I are going to come in the door now. I'd keep your hands where everyone can see them, Marshal."

Eve heaved an unsteady breath and moved off the wall and held her pilfered weapon towards the door, leveled at Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. Tim started walking towards her. Half-formulated plans to thwart her current path of action flitted through his head, each dismissed as impossible before they could solidify.

"Deputy," she said softly when they met in the hall, low enough that the men at the door couldn't hear, "If you try something heroic, I'll shoot you."

"Eve-"

"Look at me and tell me I'm lying." It was her cocked pistol in his face now. She met his eyes across the barrel and lowered it to point at the outside of his thigh. Shit. He was 78% sure she wasn't lying.

"You know what's going to happen," he talked fast, angry and pleading.

"Shut up, Tim." But her voice was gentle, not hard. His name, not his job title. She was giving up, and her acceptance of that fate pissed him off and scared him all at once.

"This is not the way." He didn't have a damn clue what the way was.

"It's the only way I keep you safe." Fuck. You dipshit…bitch…his mind stuttered around her gallant stupidity. She was saving him. That's right, she thought she owed him, and now because of some misplaced, inane sense of honor - but he knew it wasn't just honor or owing him - she was going to die. For him. And he was helpless. And terrified. He'd already lived this in a box of sand far away, and these things weren't supposed to happen here too. But it wasn't just bad memories and ghosts and nightmares with him now. It was real again. He had no doubt that once she was in this man's hands, she would die, and it would not be well. And he was furious that it was going to be for him. When they had passed each other, he stayed facing her, walking backwards.

She'd been such a well-behaved witness, of course she'd fuck up now. She continued down the hall, towards the door and the men who meant her harm, and he kept walking towards the other end, away from where he should be walking and what he ought to be doing. Not that he knew what that was. He stopped when he reached the corner next to Raylan, unable to bring himself to go around it to safety. There was nothing he could do, but he wasn't a coward. Twenty feet from the door she set down the gun she'd stolen from Raylan and stood, the hand not in a sling held up. The two men who would take her away stood with their weapons steady. When she was fifteen feet away, midstride, he heard the shot.

The first man staggered with a hole in his stomach. Whether it was a spasm or an attempt, his finger pulled the trigger, but it went wide, high on the wall. A second hole bloomed in his chest. She still had a gun. Tim scrambled for the weapon still strapped to his ankle. Eve turned too slowly to "Mr. Jones," and his bullet knocked into her chest. Vest, she has a vest. She stumbled backwards, almost fell. He wished she'd fallen. She was swaying, trying to stay on her feet, and for a few seconds, his aim was obstructed. It didn't matter in the end because she dropped him too. Two bullets in the chest, and one more as she let herself fall. She sat down hard and collapsed back against the wall. Raylan ran past Tim to the bodies clogging the doorway; they were dead but there were things you didn't take for granted.

Tim knelt next to Eve. Her face was contorted in pain. She probably had some broken ribs, only bruised if she was really lucky. He wanted to touch her, to say something, but profane insults were the only thing that would come spilling out of his mouth, and he wouldn't mean a word. He had no idea how to say what he meant, so he kept his mouth shut, and with a hand gripping each arm, gently hauled her to her feet. Something in him winced at the gasp of pain that escaped her mouth at the motion. The fingers of her good hand dug into his forearm as she caught her balance and tried to will her pain into submission.

"You're ok," she said. Her pupils were too small, and her hand wouldn't stay still, and he knew she wasn't even aware of it.

"No shit, dummy." He wasn't.

"I didn't want you to have to shoot them." She looked down at the bodies Raylan had already abandoned. It took him a moment for the implications of her statement to sink in. Not "I didn't want you to shoot them," not "I didn't want to see you kill even more people," just "I didn't want you to have to." He looked down at Mr. Smith and saw the heroin addict with the aviators again, and damned if that wasn't the sweetest, most fucked up thing anyone had ever said to him. But he didn't know how to tell her that either, so he pulled her as quickly as he could towards the SUV. Raylan was already at the wheel. She crawled into the backseat and he in after her, and when she sat upright, he loosened her seatbelt and pulled her down onto his lap on her back and held her there with an arm across her shoulders as Raylan made record time to a hospital.